An ethical skincare brand built on a real problem.

Nursem is a beauty & personal care brand born from the founders' first-hand experience of severe skin reactions caused by hospital-grade hand washing. The product is a hand cream and broader skincare range built specifically for healthcare workers - and for everyone else whose skin pays the price for the way they live.

The brand was already well-known in clinical circles. The challenge was scaling direct-to-consumer growth without the paid acquisition model breaking under its own weight - a familiar story for most DTC brands once they push past the early-traction phase.

An account doing the right things, just not at the right structure.

When we audited the account, the existing setup wasn't broken - it was just structured for an earlier stage of the brand. The issues weren't strategic, they were structural:

• Google Shopping feed - product titles built for search but not for the way Google's algorithm parses them. Custom labels missing for margin-led bidding.
• Performance Max - running with default asset groups, no exclusion of brand traffic, cannibalising the standard Shopping campaigns underneath.
• Paid social creative - heavy retargeting reliance, prospecting limited to a small set of static ads with no structured testing programme.
• Tracking - GA4 implementation was solid, but Meta CAPI was firing duplicate events and consent signals weren't reaching downstream platforms cleanly.

None of these were five-alarm fires. But together, they were costing the brand 30-40% of the upside of every pound it was spending.

Rebuild the foundations. Then push.

We took the first six weeks to do nothing visibly - no campaign launches, no big creative drops. Just structural work behind the scenes:

• Feed rebuild. Product titles re-engineered for Shopping ranking. Custom labels added for margin tiers. Attribute health audited against the Merchant Center diagnostics.
• Account architecture. Performance Max scoped down to non-brand only, standard Shopping rebuilt with priority structure. Search campaigns separated by intent stage.
• Tracking foundation. Meta CAPI implemented server-side via Stape. Deduplication keys verified on every event. Consent Mode v2 declared inline, signals flowing to all platforms.
• Creative testing programme. A monthly cadence with hypothesis-led briefs - hooks tested separately from offers, separately from format. Three winners promoted to evergreen each cycle.

From month three onward, the structural work started compounding. Paid Social moved from a retargeting-dependent channel to a real prospecting engine. Google Shopping started ranking on the queries that actually mattered. Tracking integrity meant the platforms could optimise on real data, not modelled estimates.

Run with the right tools at every layer.

The campaigns sat on a measurement foundation that was rebuilt in the first phase of the engagement.

A platform that compounds, not one that needs constant rescue.

A year in, the account is producing the kind of results most ecommerce operators recognise as "real performance" - +380% Google Shopping ROAS, paid social revenue more than doubled, and a blended customer acquisition cost down by nearly a third.

More importantly, the structural work means the next year's growth doesn't depend on another rebuild. The infrastructure compounds, the creative pipeline is producing repeatable winners, and the team in-house knows what to look at - and what not to look at - in the daily reporting.